NKorea reactivates nuclear programme
North Korea said Saturday it has started reprocessing spent fuel rods
to make weapons-grade plutonium, in an apparent response to a UN
decision to punish it for a controversial rocket launch.
The statement came hours after the United Nations slapped sanctions
on three North Korean firms accused of backing missile development, in
its first concrete action against Pyongyang over the April 5 rocket
launch.
“The reprocessing of spent fuel rods from the pilot atomic power
plant began as declared in the Foreign Ministry statement dated April
14,” a foreign ministry spokesman told the official Korean Central News
Agency. “This will contribute to bolstering the nuclear deterrence for
self-defence in every way to cope with the increasing military threats
from the hostile forces.”
North Korea on April 14 announced it would quit six-nation nuclear
disarmament talks and restart its atomic weapons programme in protest at
the UN’s statement condemning the launch.
Pyongyang says it put a satellite into orbit but the United States
and its allies say it conducted a disguised long-range ballistic missile
test.
The North had been disabling parts of the Yongbyon nuclear complex as
agreed under a February 2007 six-nation deal involving the two Koreas,
the United States, China, Russia and Japan.
But six-party negotiations stalled last December because of disputes
about ways to verify its declared nuclear activities.
Analysts say it will take three to four months before the North
completes reprocessing some 8,000 spent fuel rods from the reactor in
Yongbyon to obtain plutonium. “It will then have produced some six to
eight kilograms (13-18 pounds) of weapons-grade plutonium, which can be
used to produce one or two bombs,” Professor Yang Moo-Jin of the
University of North Korean Studies told AFP.
The North, which carried out its first nuclear test in October 2006,
reportedly put the size of its plutonium stockpile at 31 kilograms when
it handed over a nuclear declaration in June 2008.
If all has been turned into weapons, the North might have six to
eight bombs, experts say.
The move by the UN sanctions committee bans transactions and calls on
UN member-states to freeze the assets of two defence-related companies —
Korea Mining Development Trading Corporation and Korea Ryonbong General
Corporation — along with the Tanchon Commercial Bank.
Turkish Ambassador Baki Ilkin, who heads the sanctions committee,
said the nations also updated a list of items that cannot be traded with
North Korea.
The update includes “some of the latest technologies relevant to
ballistic missile programmes,” Ilkin told reporters.
Pak Tok-Hun, North Korea’s deputy permanent representative to the
United Nations, denounced the new measures as a “wanton violation” of
the United Nations charter. “It is the inalienable right of every nation
and country to make peaceful use of outer space,” Pak said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, speaking in Seoul on Friday
after a visit to Pyongyang, renewed his stance that sanctions against
North Korea were “not constructive.”
Nonetheless, the Security Council statement had activated the
sanctions committee formed under UN Resolution 1718, which was passed
after the North’s missile and nuclear tests in 2006.
The North says it needs nuclear weapons to defend itself from US
military threats.
The country, marking the anniversary of its military Saturday,
announced it would deal a “merciless strike” against the US and its
allies should they try to invade.
“Should the imperialist US and its followers touch even an inch of
our territorial land, air or sea, our troops of the Korean People’s Army
will deal a merciless strike of justice to the enemies to destroy them
and thoroughly eradicate the roots of war on the Korean Peninsula,” the
communist party newspaper Rodong Sinmun said.
AFP
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